Li­ak­ounakos in cus­tody

Busi­ness­man Thomas Li­ak­ounakos was re­manded in cus­tody last night af­ter fac­ing an anti-cor­rup­tion mag­is­trate in con­nec­tion to al­le­ga­tions that he bribed politi­cians as part of an arms deal more than a decade ago.

Li­ak­ounakos, who faces bribery and money-laun­der­ing charges, sub­mit­ted a writ­ten de­po­si­tion but also an­swered ques­tions for around five hours, par­tic­u­larly with re­gard to a Monaco-based off­shore firm in his name.

He was ar­rested ear­lier this week af­ter a probe launched by a pros­e­cu­tor found that an al­leged 2-mil­lion-euro bribe for an air­borne early warn­ing sys­tem that Greece pur­chased in 1999 passed through an off­shore com­pany in his name.